What it's like to fly a Spitfire... without your feet leaving the ground

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As I clamber into the most realistic Spitfire simulator in the world – a construction built from umpteen original parts, of which several likely saw action, pilot Matt Jones says: ‘It’s very close to feeling exactly the same.”

I’ll have to take his word for it: as a 25-year-old millennial who grew up without a toy Spitfire in sight, let alone a real one, this £250,000 replica, which has been three years in the making, is indeed as “close to feeling exactly the same” as I’m likely to get.

Opening to the public at this year's Goodwood Revival, Jones and his colleagues at the Boultbee Flying Academy have developed a creation they hope will stir vivid memories for those who might have seen, or even flown, Spitfires during WWII. It will also help them to prepare for a daring trip they're set to take next year, to fly a Spitfire around the world and further the international awareness of this classic piece of British engineering.

Which makes me well aware that I am not the target market here. Somewhere out there is a venerable single-seater plane enthusiast who should really be in my place: he doesn’t muscle in on my vegan burger-chomping or craft ale-slurping, so why should I take his seat in the cockpit?

Yet here I am, poised and ready to find out whether the experience can live up to expectation – and to address whether today’s youth can match up to its flying-ace predecessors, just in case my piloting prowess inspires any future governments to conscript me.

The simulator consists of about the middle third or so of the fighter’s fuselage, with the cockpit at the front. On either side of this are sturdy green wings; behind it is an array of seven beefy projectors. Below that is a set of stomach-lurching hydraulic machinery, and in front of the cockpit, filling my entire field of vision, is a projected hemisphere of cloud-kissed blue sky.

The cockpit itself is narrow and dimly lit, but once I’ve shoehorned myself in I can see the gauges, switches and buttons that make up my dashboard. It’s at once bewilderingly complex, but also intimidatingly simple.

Tom Ough tries a Spitfire simulator out for size at Boultbee Flying Academy

There are no curlicues or fripperies – not even a floor, as I discover when my biro falls from my pocket and rattles into the machinery beneath. It looks just like the real Spitfire cockpit that Jones had let me sit in earlier.

Yet now is the real test of my aviation aspirations, and there is surely no better place to do so than in this simulator, which is the most advanced in the world – others being mere approximations, involving three computer screens in front of a mocked-up cockpit, while this one has the original.

I’m pinging the grip around in my hand as Richard Banks, the technician in charge of the simulator’s digital components, prepares the computer for my maiden flight. This is one of many parts that came from a Spitfire deployed during WWII, so no wonder that Jones is “a bit sentimental about this," particularly because, he says, "I think you can feel the difference.”

He leaps off as the simulation begins. I’m on an airfield and have to take off: the whole machine rumbles, and the propeller’s roar blasts through my headset. With Jones, a Spitfire display pilot and instructor of eight years, guiding me, I release the throttle with my left hand, accelerating towards the end of the runway, tipping the nose forward and then back again with the gear before shakily leaving the ground.

There’s a green vista beneath me and the sky above. I pitch and roll in the clear air. The machine rolls with me, but at this point I’m unconscious of its being a machine: my belief is not only suspended, but suspended at about 10,000 feet.

Even the dials have been programmed to wobble as they did in the real aircraft, a touch refined by Banks who, in the days prior to my visit, spent 64 hours making the final tweaks.

Behind the cockpit is the array of projectorsCredit:
Christopher Pledger

Handling the plane is an immediate, reactive and percussive experience. Flying at 250mph, I execute a victory roll – and felt as nauseous, I imagine, as I would have done in the real thing.

After a while I try landing, traditionally one of the biggest hazards awaiting trainee Spitfire pilots, and promptly hurtle nose-first into the ground. The screen goes black.

I have another go, and this time making a very bumpy landing which, because I don’t know how to brake, ends with my Spitfire rolling uninvited into an aircraft hangar at Shoreham-by-Sea. Being called up for duty at 10,000 feet, then, seems unlikely. But the experience was certainly a lot higher octane than a chickpea burger.

Boultbee Flight Academy’s Spitfire simulator opens to the public at Goodwood Revival (7-9 September) and is available for booking thereafter. Visit boultbeeflightacademy.co.uk